The day the first person went into space – level 3

12-04-1961

Yuri Gagarin was 27 years old when he was preparing for his space flight. The training for the flight took months, and he did it with five other candidates.

The training was extremely hard. They had to withstand a huge g-force on the centrifuge, then handle a two-hour stay in a thermal chamber at 70 degrees Celsius. They also had to spend up to fifteen days alone in the isolation chamber. They had to undergo parachuting training.

In the end, Gagarin was the one who was chosen to go to space. He had a nice nature and also the name Yuri, which represented the Soviet Union well.

On April 12, 1961, everything was ready at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The Vostok 1 spacecraft with the first astronaut on board launched into space.

The flight itself lasted 108 minutes. Gagarin reached an altitude of 327 kilometers and orbited the Earth once. Then Vostok 1 began to descend. When it reached an altitude of 7 kilometers, Gagarin catapulted and parachuted to the ground.

Gagarin suddenly became the most famous man on the planet.

Difficult words: withstand (to be able to handle), g-force (gravitational force), centrifuge (a machine that spins), thermal (hot), chamber (a special room), undergo (to do), nature (character), launch (to start), altitude (the height above the sea), descend (to go lower).

What skills do you think Yuri Gagarin had that made him a better choice than the other five candidates for the space flight?

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